Feeding a little one seems like a more complex landscape than it used to be, given questions about how necessary it is to buy organic, the safety of some meats and genetically modified foods, the affects of our diets on the environment, and the intentions and marketing behind some packaged baby foods.
In my efforts to raise a healthy, happy eater, Sweet Pea is a place to share information, offer thoughts, ask questions, document the process of trying to raise a smarter vegetarian than I ever was and, I hope, to remain mindful of enjoying it all.
I'm the author of "The Gastronomy of Marriage" and a freelance writer in Brooklyn, N.Y., where I spend my time cooking, eating, running, writing, Tweeting (@MichelleMaisto) and struggling to learn Mandarin.

Eating Less Meat Is World's Best Chance For Timely Climate Change, Say Experts

Shifting the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is important, certainly. But the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be a vegetarian diet eating less meat, according to a recent report in World Watch Magazine. (While I’d happily nudge the world toward a vegetarian diet, the report authors are more measured and simply suggest diets containing less meat.)

“The entire goal of today’s international climate objectives can be achieved by replacing just one-fourth of today’s least eco-friendly food products with better alternatives,” co-author Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental advisor wrote in an April 18 blog post on the report.

A widely cited 2006 report estimated that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. However, analysis performed by Goodland, with co-writer Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, found that figure to now more accurately be 51%.

Consequently, state the pair, replacing livestock products with meat alternatives would “have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations — and thus on the rate the climate is warming — than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

The pair describe several areas related to anthropogenic (human-caused) greenhouse gases that have been overlooked or underestimated. For example, livestock breathing. They explain:

[L]ivestock (like automobiles) are a human invention and convenience, not part of pre-human times, and a molecule of CO2 exhaled by livestock is no more natural than one from an auto tailpipe. Moreover, while over time an equilibrium of CO2 may exist between the amount respired by animals and the amount photosynthesized by plants, that equilibrium has never been static. Today, tens of billions more livestock are exhaling CO2 than in preindustrial days, while Earth’s photosynthetic capacity (its capacity to keep carbon out of the atmosphere by absorbing it in plant mass) has declined sharply as forest has been cleared. (Meanwhile, of course, we add more carbon to the air by burning fossil fuels, further overwhelming the carbon-absorption system.)

The human population is expected to grow by 35% between 2006 and 2050, while livestock numbers are expected to double during the same period.

“This would make the amount of livestock-related emissions even more unacceptable than today’s perilous levels,” states the report. “It also means that an effective strategy must involved replacing livestock products with better alternatives, rather than substituting one meat product with another that has a somewhat lower carbon footprint.”

Food companies, Goodland and Anhang believe, have at least three incentives to respond to current risks in their industry. The first is that companies already suffer from disruptive climate events — floods, hurricanes, etc. — and so it’s in their best interests to not worsen the situation.

Second, they expect the demand for oil to rise to point of collapsing “many parts of today’s economy.” One way in which this will be particularly troublesome for livestock producers will be that crops grown for feed will be refocused on biofuel sources.

A third incentive is to offer “alternatives to livestock products that taste similar but are easier to cook, less expensive and healthier, and so are better than livestock products.”

Sales of just soy “analogs,” or alternatives to livestock products — such as ice cream, milk and cheese — totaled $1.9 billion in 2007. That same year, sales of U.S. meat and poultry products totaled $100 billion — which they optimistically suggest means there’s much room for growth.

“Worldwide, the market for meat and dairy analogs is potentially almost as big as the market for livestock products,” they write.

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What’s better for the environment is to eat a veg diet WITHOUT meat analogs. Like many vegs do. Promoting fake meats, which are not particularly tasty or healthy and are overloaded with soy, really is counterproductive.

Great advice! I went vegan two decades ago for ethical reasons. My health also benefited and now I’m happy that my food choices also help combat climate change and pollution and conserve water, land, fossil fuels, and other resources. And since mock meats, soy ice cream, and other vegan foods tastes good and are widely available, it’s really easy to be green! www.PETA.org has lots of great tips and meatless meal ideas.

My BS alarm is going off big-time here. Humans did not create livestock, we merely domesticated them. If CO2 from human and animal respiration were a serious climate change problem, Mother Nature would not have us and animal life exhaling CO2 when we breathe in the first place. It’s nature’s way of telling us that CO2 is part of the natural cycle of life on this planet, especially when you consider the fact that CO2 is necessary food/fertilizer for plant life. Our agricultural output benefits from the CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

If these “scientists” truly believe what they say, then I challenge them to invent a CO2 sequestration mask for humans and animals to wear. And let them be the first ones to wear them. Lead by example.

Lastly, I don’t have the time to explain all the science that says the climate alarmists’ so-called “science” regarding catastrophic climate change is equally BS. I will just direct the reader to Anthony Watts’ excellent website that has been poking huge holes in the climate alarmists’ so-called “science” for years now — www.wuwt.com. In the meantime, I will keep eating as much meat (read and otherwise) as I want, thank you.

Human and livestock respiration is definitely not a factor in climate change. The authors are flat-out wrong. Respiration is part of the short-term carbon cycle, and it is NOT a factor in increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. Replacing forests with pastureland may, but that has nothing at all to do with respiration.

And you don’t need to denigrate scientists by putting “scientists” in quotes. It’s not evident that the authors of this report are scientists at all, and the report certainly was not peer reviewed. Don’t confuse this with actual scientific research.

But your reference to Watts answers my earlier question about where you’re getting your climate science from, and it explains why you’ve got it all wrong. If you want science information, you should get it from actual scientists, not from retired TV weathermen who never graduated from college.

My BS alarm is going off big-time here. Humans did not create livestock, we merely domesticated them. If CO2 from human and animal respiration were a serious climate change problem, Mother Nature would not have us and animal life exhaling CO2 when we breathe in the first place. It’s nature’s way of telling us that CO2 is part of the natural cycle of life on this planet, especially when you consider the fact that CO2 is necessary food/fertilizer for plant life. Our agricultural output benefits from the CO2 levels in the atmosphere. And I for one don’t believe in biting the hand that helps to feed me.

If these “scientists” truly believe what they say, then I challenge them to invent a CO2 sequestration mask for humans and animals to wear. And let them be the first ones to wear them. Lead by example.

Lastly, I don’t have the time to explain all the science that says the climate alarmists’ so-called “science” regarding catastrophic climate change is equally BS. I will just direct the reader to Anthony Watts’ excellent website that has been poking huge holes in the climate alarmists’ so-called “science” for years now — www.wuwt.com. In the meantime, I will keep eating as much meat (read and otherwise) as I want, thank you.

Apart from the ignorance of your “experts” on climate change – the Sun is going very quiet, the Earth is cooling not warming and we can expect a repeat of the Dalton Minimum – they know little about animal agriculture either nor the potential for soy products. For every 1 degree centigrade the earth cools the grain growing areas move south by around 150 km, such that if the Dalton conditions come as expected we can forget grain production in Canada and Northern Europe/Asia. What will take its place is grassland and it may come as a surprise to your experts that dairy cows, beef animals, sheep, goats and other ruminant livestock can be productive off grass as well as consuming the fibre fractions of grain crops, such that they do not compete with humans but have always provided a store of food in times of need. True poultry and pigs do compete and maybe savings could be made here but what about all the sacred cows in India that neither produce food nor traction yet we have Pachauri lecturing us on eating less meat. As for soy products I worked for a company in the 1960′s that “knitted” and “laminated” beef, bacon and other products from soy and they were a resounding failure. Finally they should know that satellite data shows that World biomass has increased 6% since the middle of the last century, thanks to warmer weather and increased levels of carbon dioxide and that grain crops will respond by up to 40% in yield if carbon dioxide level is raised above 1000 ppm, with no significant effect on climate, and that the Japanese Ibuki satellite has shown a net absorption of carbon dioxide in N America, N Europe/Asia that is linked to greater uptake by forests that can increase growth by up to 85% from the same increased levels of carbon dioxide. The World is only in danger from the misinformation of so called climate “experts” not from increased levels of carbon dioxide and a failure of our “leaders” to anticipate the consequences of cooling.

CO2 is a TRACE gas in the earth’s atmosphere comprising about .039% of all atmospheric gasses (thirty-nine thousandths of one percent). You can kill all the humans and cows and it won’t make a whit of difference in climate. Neither cows’ breathing nor dinosaur farts have anything to do with it.